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Saturday, August 24, 2013

He is the first
Person to know and say that humanity must go beyond itself and Man has to
evolve beyond himself towards supermanhood, towards becoming a supramental
being. That is the Will of the Supreme, the design of Nature, of Supernature as
He termed.

Sri Aurobindosaid :

Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of
self-discovery and world-discovery, its half fulfilments, its constant finding
and missing, is only our first state. It must lead inevitably towards an
evolution in the Knowledge, a self finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a
self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in
Nature which is to us still a Supernature

While Matter is
apparently Inconscient, evolution from Matter to Man is through Ignorance.
Though Man has grown with more consciousness and knowledge in his evolution out
of evolving animal-hood manifesting Life, he is half-conscious, half-fulfilled,
having some incomplete, insufficient and inconclusive knowledge, some more or
less ineffective and superficial knowledge. Man has evolved with Mind, but what
he carries with him as Mind is only a very small and miniature fragment the
real principle of Mind, which the humanity as a whole has not yet evolved or
used or even become conscious of. The higher and deeper ranges of Mind is
touched and partly used only by a few. However, these few persons let us
believe that transcendence of the present state is possible. Our endeavor for
self-discovery and world-discovery is also only partially fulfilled,
inconclusive and insufficient. Our previous Leaders have led some individuals,
but the mass still gropes in darkness, and the followers have begun clashes,
feuds and wars, and have the journey regressive and backward towards the
primitive state of mind, though dressed and decorated with ornaments of modern
superficialities.

Sri Aurobindo said :

Inheritor of the brief animal mind,

Man, still a child in Nature's mighty hands,

In the succession of moments lives;

To a changing present is his narrow right,

His memory stares back at a phantom past,

The future flees before him as he moves;

He sees imagined garments, not a face.

Savitri: Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo further said:

Armed with a limited precarious strength,

He saves his fruits of work from adverse chance.

A struggling ignorance is his wisdom's mate:

He waits to see the consequence of his acts,
He waits to weigh the certitude of his thoughts,
He knows not what he shall achieve or when;
He knows not whether at last he shall survive,
Or end like the mastodon and the sloth
And perish from the earth where he was king.
He is ignorant of the meaning of his life,
He is ignorant of his high and splendid fate.

Savitri: Sri Aurobindo.

Blessed with an
incomplete and imperfect mental consciousness that Nature has bestowed on him,
Man lives with Ignorance in all walks of his life and existence. He is uncertain
about the results of his actions or about the certainty of his thoughts, of his
future achievements and even about his own survival or his purpose on earth or
his destiny. Our history is filled with our repeated battles, bloodsheds, and
massacres, along with two World Wars. Instead of loving our earth, we have
divided, sub-divided and further subdivided it into smaller and smaller regions
and fought against each other. We live backwards towards a regression.

Generally, we are not
conscious of any higher aim and meaning of our life. We live with our narrow
egoistic choices and more or less selfish activities. We spend our time for
sensuous and gross satisfactions, not even caring for the well-being and health
of our body, life and mind, not to speak of the unknown and unseen soul or
psychic being or the Divine. We are not sure whether our activities would lead
us to an extinction, like that of the Dinosaurs that existed during the
Mesozoic Era.

This is one side of
the matter. The other side is hopeful. In spite of the Darkness and Ignorance
around us, we have relentlessly endeavored to conquer the situation we are born
in on earth. The results are civilization, science, medicine, philosophy, arts,
education, social and economic activities, religion, spirituality and yoga.
Though we are imperfect in all our attempts, we have not given up. All our
endeavors, all our inner askesis and inner necessity and aspiration for more
than last fifty millennia have been answered by the Supreme with the New Possibility
and New Hope that Sri Aurobindo has given
us.

We shall have to
transcend and then transform ourselves, finally with the Light of the
Supramental Consciousness. This is to be done both individually and
collectively. To transform ourselves, we should know ourselves, know all the
parts of our beings and bring the Light in all the realms of our being.

Our aim is no more to
have Nirvana, merge ourselves into the Absolute Brahman, leaving the earthly
evolution and manifestation. We are to participate in the Manifestation of the
Divine, of the Supermind here on earth. We need no more escape into any Nihil
or Brahman or Far-off Heaven, we will change this Earth.

Sri Aurobindo said :

A heavenlier passion shall upheave men's lives,
Their mind shall share in the ineffable gleam,
Their heart shall feel the ecstasy and the fire.
Earth's bodies shall be conscious of a soul;
Mortality's bond slaves shall unloose their bonds,
Mere men into spiritual beings grow

And see awake the dumb divinity.
Intuitive beams shall touch the nature's peaks,
A revelation stir the nature's depths;
The Truth shall be the leader of their lives,
Truth shall dictate their thought and speech and act,
They shall feel themselves lifted nearer to the sky,
As if a little lower than the gods.

Savitri:Sri Aurobindo

This is the luminous
Future Sri Aurobindo has seen! More humans will grow into spiritual beings, who
will be freed from the slavery of darkness, ignorance, sufferings and death !!
Truth shall dictate their thought and speech and acts.

O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.

One shall descend and break the iron law,

Change Nature's doom by the lone Spirit's power…

A seed shall be sown in Death's tremendous hour,

A branch heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.

Savitri : Sri Aurobindo

This earth is a field
of Evolution. From the scientific viewpoint, man is at the apex of Evolution.
But he is not a perfect being. He lives with ignorance, chaos, disorder,
incapacity, imbalance, disharmony, aimlessness, unhappiness and sufferings.
However, that is one aspect of the Truth. Inborn with him is a longing for
happiness, Bliss. And ever with him there is Hope. Hope is an
eternal companion of man. The humanity has to evolve into a race of
supramental beings, or else he will be replaced by a race of higher beings, in
order to give effect to the evolutionary progress: this is the necessity of the
evolutionary principle, and this is what The
Mother has said :

Men, countries, continents!

The choice is imperative:

Truth or the abyss.

A beautiful, joyous,
harmonious and luminous Future of divine perfection is waiting for man as his
evolutionary possibility and goal, his evolutionary Future. He cannot
continue for ever as he is till now. He has to proceed ahead from the
present position. Or else, the evolutionary forces of Nature, Supernature, will
surpass him and choose some other means for fulfilment of the goal:
ever-progressive manifestation of Consciousness.

That is our Future,
preordained. We shall have to ascend, integrally.

Should we discard our
normal life, the society, the family and the social and material
responsibilities for this journey to the Future, for this Goal? No. We can
start the journey from where we are now, simply by changing our inner
attitude and inner aspiration, our approach and activities.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world's history is not a
teaching, not even a revelation ; it is a decisive action, direct from the
Supreme. [The Mother]

Sri Aurobindo, in His
Teaching to the mankind, initially accepts what the ancient sages of India
taught: that behind the appearance of the universe, of the Manifestation, there
is the Reality of a Being that is Consciousness.

According to Sri
Aurobindo, this universe is the Manifestation of this One
Being-cum-Consciousness through a continuous Evolution. This One Being-cum-Consciousness
is involved on earth in Matter. Evolution is the way by which this
Being-cum-Consciousness liberates itself. Consciousness liberates itself in
what appears as inconscient, and once having this liberation, it impelled it self
to grow higher and higher and simultaneously to enlarge and develop towards a
greater and greater perfection. The first step of this liberation of
consciousness is Life. The next step is
Mind. But Evolution does not end with Mind. It aims to move ahead into
something greater, into a Consciousness that is spiritual and supramental. The
next step of Evolution must be towards the development of Supermind and Spirit
as the dominantpower in the conscious being. Because, then only the involved
Divinity in things will release itself fully and manifestation of perfection
will become possible in life.

Sri Aurobindo had
never aimed at developing any particular religion or amalgamating the older
religions or founding any new religion – for any of these things would lead
away from His central Truth. The aim of His Yoga is an inner self-development by
which each one who follows it can in time discover the One Self in all and
evolve a higher consciousness than the mental, a Spiritual and Supramental
consciousness which will transform and divinize human nature.

OOOOOO

Beyond all
sufferings, beyond all sin and fall, beyond all struggles and tussles and
wrestles of human life, there is a Truth, a Hope — the ensured Hope of the
Dawn, of the Sunrise after the Darkest of the Dark Nights. There is the ensured
Hope of the Eternal Joy after Time, and even after Death! There are Dreams of
Hope and Joy and Victory beyond all the harsh realities and sins and falls of
life — Dreams which are more real than life.

“One
step and there is all sky and God”

Sri Aurobindo has
kindled this flame of Hope for all of us.

Even
Sri Aurobindo had to undergo
experiences, which we name “suffering”— He was even imprisoned for one year,
though He was honorably acquitted. And His imprisonment has been leading us all
to the Life Divine, to the New Supramental World.

In some close unattained realm
which yet we feel,
Immune from the harsh clutch of Death and Time,
Escaping the search of sorrow and desire,
In bright enchanted safe peripheries
For ever wallowing in bliss they lie.
In dream and trance and muse before our eyes,
Across a subtle vision's inner field,
Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from the sight,
The figures of the perfect kingdom pass
And behind them leave a shining memory's trail.
Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,
Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our hearts with their depths;
Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,
Happier than happiness, truer than things true,
If dreams these were or captured images,
Dream's truth made false earth's vain realities.
In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
Illumined continents of violet peace,
Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
And griefless countries under purple suns. This, once a star of bright remote idea
Or imagination's comet trail of dream,
Took now a close shape of reality.
The gulf between dream-truth, earth-fact was crossed,
The wonder-worlds of life were dreams no more;
His vision made all they unveiled its own:
Their scenes, their happenings met his eyes and heart
And smote them with pure loveliness and bliss.

Savitri: Bk II, Co III: Sri Aurobindo

As a consequence of the Tapasya of The Master
and The Mother, the humanity is now to cross the present earthly realities and
reach the wonder-worlds of the New Creation, the Supramental Creation. That is
the Task and the Future of the humanity

Barindranath Chaki

Interested mainly in the Adventure of Consciousness, I believe in human progress and evolution and in the inner capacity of Man to outgrow and master all his imperfections and darkness, to grow into a creative and constructive divine being, along with the society, conquering all inner and outer darkness, crossing all barriers and divisions.
I am a retired Officer of the Orissa Administrative Service from Orissa, India. Since adolescence, I was inspired by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother (Mira Alfassa) and sought to understand and follow Their Teaching, and make others understand and follow Them. In 1956, I read The Life Divine, and gradually, read almost all that is written by Them and about Them. I have visited the Ashram and Auroville some times. I organized some Sri Aurobindo centres in Orissa, and often met Prapatti and Ramkrishna Das. I and my wife and children had a special Darshan of The Mother on my birthday on 3rd March 1972.
Mira Aditi Centre has published my Bengali translations of some books including Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness by Satprem, India's Rebirth and India the Mother, collections from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.